


Off Handed

by TellMeNoAgain



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Prompt Fic, negative self image
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25549075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TellMeNoAgain/pseuds/TellMeNoAgain
Summary: For the Starker and More Discord prompt, from the lovely ErjaStark:Tony losing his arm in Afghanistan and then being even more broken and lost when he comes back(Or, well, THIS PROMPT:I DO WHATEVER I WANTTONY WITH A METAL ARMokay waithe loses his arm in afghanistanthere)
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	Off Handed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ErjaStark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErjaStark/gifts).



> SO MANY THANKS to my betas and cheerreaders, mindwiped and jf4m
> 
> EXTRA MANY THANKS to the original prompt from ErjaStark
> 
> Let's review it quick, shall we?
> 
> I DO WHATEVER I WANT  
> TONY WITH A METAL ARM  
> okay wait  
> he loses his arm in afghanistan  
> there  
> ...  
> Tony losing his arm in Afghanistan and then being even more broken and lost when he comes back

Tony grunted, slamming his hand on the bathroom sink. _His_ bathroom sink, in _his_ house, because _he wasn’t in Afghanistan_. He _wasn’t_.

His fucking right hand was, though.

Fuck.

One minute of miscalculation, and he was down a fucking hand, and now he’s home and he’s in his house, and in America, and he can’t _get out of Afghanistan_ because every fucking time he thinks he can let his guard down, something easy is fucking impossible and that’s not home, okay? That’s not _home_ , where everything is _all better_.

He’s not all better.

He’s broken.

Him and his missing fucking hand.

Fuck.

~~~

It’s fine.

It’s fine. He’ll just, he’ll just build one. 

Fuck that. 

He’ll build a better one. 

He’ll build a new right hand, one so good people’ll be chopping off their right hands to own his castaway right hands.

He’ll fucking do it.

That’ll show Howard.

Tony takes another gulp from the bottle, shocked at that stray thought. Who the fuck cared what that asshole thought? Who cared how much he’d be disappointed, how he’d look away, disgusted, how he’d-

Fuck.

Tony did.

Tony tipped the bottle again and sucked the slick burning fire down until he didn’t.

~~~

God. Hangovers with a fucking stump were even worse than hangovers before.

Everything about getting out of Afghanistan was worse.

Should have just stayed there.

At least he’d be dead.

So would a lot of other people.

Maybe Yinsen’d be alive, though.

Tony threw up again, tears running off the tip of his nose.

Yeah, he really needed to figure out how to come home at some point. Get out of Afghanistan. But first-

Gross.

~~~

Rhodey said, “Okay, look, man, at least talk to my guy. He’s- he works with a lot of vets-”

“Do I look like a vet to you, Rhodey?” snapped Tony, realizing he couldn’t switch off the damn news from blaring in the background because he was holding the phone in his only fucking hand. 

“Yeah, Tony, you do,” snapped Rhodey right back. “You know a lot of civilians missing limbs and drinking themselves to death from PTSD?”

“Fuck you, Rhodey,” grunted Tony, throwing the phone against the wall.

“You built that phone to handle tossing it off Stark Tower and you think throwing it with your off-hand is gonna break it?” scoffed Rhodey from the floor.

“I _said_ ,” shouted Tony, “fuck _you_ , Rhodey, the only _off-hand_ I have now is _off-off_ and it’s buried somewhere in _Afghanistan_.”

“No, it’s fucking not, Tony,” sighed Rhodey, almost inaudible. “But you go ahead and think everything happening to you is about that place.”

“Hang up,” ordered Tony. “Rhodey, I swear to God, hang up.”

There was silence, and Tony breathed in a sob.

“Never,” said Rhodey firmly.

Tony did cry, then.

~~~

He just, he wasn’t in Afghanistan, okay, but he wasn’t- he wasn’t _home_ , either, and that sucked, and Rhodey came and took, like, emotional leave or something and that _helped_ , sure, but the guy Rhodey took him to just looked at him and waited and Tony. Couldn’t.

_Fuck._

~~~

“Whatcha doin’, Tony?” asked Rhodey, his voice disembodied through the workshop speaker.

Tony grunted around the screwdriver in his mouth, “Workin’, what’s it sound like?”

“Work,” agreed Rhodey. “What are you, uh, working on?”

“Better noose,” joked Tony blackly.

“Okay, see, now I gotta come down and interrupt you, man, you know that, you do this to yourself,” Rhodey told him. 

Tony smiled around the screwdriver and fiddled with the schematic. He was about due for a break, anyway. His back was killin’ him.

Building it better, yeah. And flashy, too. Something- something to be proud of.

That’d do it.

~~~

“Fuck!” Tony shouted, throwing the wrench at Dummy. “Fuck you, you fucking- fuck!”

“I believe this one, also, has a snapped micro-” intoned the forlorn voice of JARVIS.

“A snapped microcircuit, I know, I fucking know, J, shut the fuck up,” snapped Tony. Fucking _bot._

But it wasn’t Dummy’s fault, he hadn’t been _built_ to replace Tony’s hands.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

~~~

Hangovers still sucked worse, because he could only prop himself up with one hand, and the fucking stump _throbbed in time to his headache_.

~~~

He wasn’t _in_ Afghanistan anymore. He was in _America_ , sure it was another country that began with an A and was filled with assholes, but that’s where the similarities ended. He was _home_. He was- he was the master of his domain, he was Tony. Fucking. Stark, and he was inserting delicate fiddly circuitry when he was fucking four years old, he could-

“ _Fuck!”_

“I believe this one has also failed, sir,” intoned JARVIS.

“ _Shut_ the _fuck_ up, J,” shouted Tony, picking up a wrench and throwing it.

~~~

The door slid open silently and Tony moaned at the slash of light that appeared.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Pepper Potts, kneeling and shifting to awkwardly pull on him. “Time to get up, Tony.”

“I don’ nee’ y’r _help_ ,” muttered Tony angrily.

“No, you don’t,” sighed Pepper, shaking her head at him. God, she smelled good.  
  
God, he smelled _awful_.

“C’mon, Tony. To bed.”

“‘S _tryin’_ to g’to bed, Pep,” he confessed tearfully. “B’ the damn _dreams_ , Pep. Gotta, gotta give ‘em something, make me _sleep.”_

“Oh, Tony,” said Pepper quietly. “Not like this, Tony.”

“Like this, Pepper,” he said manfully, confident and assured and- and _right_ , and then he belched, and then he threw up.

That’ll show her.

~~~

Pepper dialed the number and held up the phone and Tony talked, and then she left and came back with sleeping pills, and she brought them to him every night at 10 PM, sharp. She watched while he took them and made him open his mouth and checked under his tongue, and _what had Rhodey been telling her?_

She made him sit down for meals and JARVIS, the traitor, would turn off the music and the lights, and he couldn’t code as fast as JARVIS could codebreak, one-handed, and so he was sitting down for meals, again. Fuck. More than he ever had in his entire life, he was sitting down for meals.  
  
And she made him go sit and stare at Rhodey’s guy by kidnapping him before coffee for early-morning appointments.

Sometimes he did more than just stare at the guy, and that was _worse_.

Outside of the shit she bullied him into doing, Tony worked in the workshop and fucked up so many more prototypes, and then, one day, she actually stepped down into the workshop, opened the door and everything, instead of sending her messages via JARVIS.

“What is it you do all day, down here?” she asked, as if a little afraid he’d kick her out.

He wouldn’t.

“Working on an arm,” he grunted, finishing up the last fucking shaky microweld and sighing. He’d done better work at 8, but then, he’d done it _with his right hand_.

“Tony, this is- these are beautiful,” gasped Pepper, looking around at all the fucking wrecks scattered around the place.

He glanced around, trying to see what she saw. “Yeah, I can get them to right about here, and then, you know, kablooey.”

“Kablooey? Is that the official engineering term?” she teased him lightly.

He nodded back at her seriously, and then turned to stare down at the latest model. She joined him at the workbench, her shoulder brushing against his.

“So, what makes them go kablooey?” she asked, sounding actively interested.

“It’s microcircuitry, and the bots- my hand- we can’t get _steady_ enough for it, it’s finicky work, gotta have steady hands.” _Good hands_. 

_Hands_.

Tony sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “It 10 PM yet?”

Pepper hummed, “Almost. But, Tony, show me. Show me what you need to do.”

Tony blinked. “Uh, well,” he temporized, before leaning forward. “See this, here? You take this, it’s like a pen, right, but like the smallest, hottest pen on the planet, and it writes, like, molten metal, okay?”

~~~

It turned out, Pepper did calligraphy in her spare time, to help her relax. Fiddly calligraphy, with some of her brushes no bigger than a single bristle.

Holding the smallest, hottest pen on the planet and drawing a straight line between two points was just challenge mode, she told him, later.

~~~

Tony wiggled the fingers of his right hand.

His _right hand_.

He looked up at Pepper’s awed expression and he did it again.

“Tony,” she whispered, delighted. “Tony, did you-”

He felt something well up, from somewhere frantic deep inside him, and he pressed his lips tightly together so it wouldn’t get out as he nodded back at her. Her face lit up even brighter and her eyes filled a little with tears, and his vision went weird and she whispered, “Oh my God, _Tony.”_   
  
Dummy threw a wrench at him and he flinched, raising his hand instinctively. The _clang_ of metal on metal was loud as Pepper whirled, shouting, “What the _hell_ , _Dummy!”_

Tony stared at his hand. At the wrench in his hand. At the- he’d- he looked up at Pepper, saying in a faint voice, “I- Pepper, I- the interface-”

“Oh my God, Tony,” she grinned. “It worked!”

“It worked,” he agreed, stunned, staring at the wrench in his _right hand_. He looked back up at her and her grin blossomed into the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. On anyone.

“You’re a genius,” she told him seriously, smile still hovering on her lips.

“You knew that,” he reminded her. “I have- I have so many awards, you dust them, or get them dusted or whatever, you _knew_ that.”

“JARVIS, call Rhodey, tell him to get here tonight,” declared Pepper excitedly.

“No,” interrupted Tony. “No, Pep. No.” Her face wrinkled in confusion, in hurt. “No, tell him tomorrow, J.” He squared his body and looked up at Pep from under his lashes.  
  
“Tell him tomorrow,” he whispered at her.

Her face was a study as her eyes flicked all over his face, searching, searching, her body going still as she found- figured out- what he wanted, what he needed. “Oh,” she said, and then, “Oh?”

Tony nodded, licking his lips, and tried, “Please?”

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Yes, please, _Tony_ , yes, JARVIS, tell him tomorrow, he needs to come tomorrow, for, for br- for brunch.”

“- _lunch_ -” interrupted Tony, reaching for her hand.

“Late lunch,” she agreed, running her fingers down the smooth shiny metal and flicking her eyes back up to his face as she lifted the hand with her own, to touch her _cheek_ , to caress her delicate face, to- “Tony, I swear to God if you don’t kiss me-” she threatened.

He chuckled and bent his head, his right hand sliding along to cradle the back of her head delicately, so gently, so lightly.

She tasted as good as she smelled.

~~~

Rhodey said, “Man, are you sure? I mean, dating your secretary, isn’t that like-”

“I’m sure,” declared Tony. “Also, not to denigrate the secretaries of the last century, she’s not a secretary, and I’m offended that you think I’m just talking about dating her.”

“Tony,” laughed Rhodey, “Tone, are you kidding me? Pepper Potts?”

“Pepper Potts,” confirmed Tony.

Rhodey shook his head and then laughed. “Why? Why her?”

Tony thought of home, of coming home, of being home, of the look in her eyes as he’d taken the hand off and she’d kissed the stump, of the way she’d insisted he take the damn pill anyway, _and_ still checked under his tongue. He thought of how she smiled, and how she laughed, and how she smelled and how she tasted.

None of that would capture it.

Fuck. Words couldn’t do it.

Well, story of his life. He’d work with what he had, until he could build better. 

“I came home to her, and I want to do it every day and night for the rest of my life,” he told his best friend.

“Jesus, Tony, you’re fucking serious,” said Rhodey after a long pause.

Tony nodded, and looked away.

“I’ll, I’ll be right there. I’m happy, I love Pepper, you know that,” said Rhodey, a little awkwardly.

“I do,” Tony told him. He didn’t, but it didn’t surprise him. There’d been plenty of hints that the two were in cahoots together.

“Well, okay, then, Tony,” said Rhodey. There was another long pause and then Rhodey said, “Hey, man,” and Tony looked back at the phone screen, to Rhodey’s familiar, lopsided smile. “Good to have you home,” he said carefully, enunciating each word slowly.

Tony had to fight the tightness in his throat to croak, “Thanks.”

~~~

When she woke him in the morning, she kissed every fingertip on the hand he’d been resting on her chest. 

The _right_ hand.

Because there wasn’t any part of him in Afghanistan anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> These prompts are so much fun to write. Short, sweet, everything I want to write encapsulated in less than 5,000 words. 
> 
> Expect more.
> 
> Prompts are so FUN.


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